A brief history of my steam locomotive

1. And suddenly, there was a steamer...

It happened in January 2006, during my third participate on the Live Steam Indoor Convention in Sinsheim. As in the years before, I was there with my peat light railway models with my two battery powered engines. As I was driving to the first day of the convention on early Friday morning, I promised to my self, that I would buy nothing on this fair… Well… it was a good resolution…

As I arrived in Sinsheim, a meet an old friend, asking me about the stand of my battery powered steamer, I announced some month ago. I had cancelled this project in fact of large laughter about this idea. He encouraged me to build my steamer as planed I started looking for a nice little prototype for this project. My choice fell on the live steamer of another friend. The "Angry Ant" was a small 0-4-0 Koppel engine and would fit great with my peat railway.

On Saturday morning, I walked through hall #2 as I noticed a second steamer looking close to the "Angry Ant" of my friend Hannes. Some minutes later, I came back with Hannes and we take a look to this engine. As I noticed before, the loco was build by the same manufacturer as the "Angry Ant". As these engines have been built in Spain, they are seldom seen in Germany… I thought at this time…

We talked about some details on the other engines and some redesigns, before we go back to our trains.

On evening the same day, I meet Hannes again, talking with some other railroaders and he told me, that the small steamer, that I had found this morning, was for sale. I didn't realize this at first and my first words has been "What?? How much?? Who's the owner?? And where is he??" We go back to the engine and some time later, the owner was also there and I had a lot of questions to him…

Some minutes later, I was standing for a bunch of problems to solve. Okay, I had enough money to by the loco, but what does my dad says, or my girlfriend… and did I am really want to buy a live steam loco?? Okay… Forget the last one… ;-)

The next day, I went to Alex, the owner of the steamer, and he explained me what I had to know about the steamer and I got the chance for a long test run. Later we talked about the last points of discussion like "how to pay" and "how to manage the delivery". This day becomes known as the most expensive convention day in life.

I transferred the steamer into hall #4 to my other railroad stuff and as the last convention day was over, I realized a big problem coming up… I had troubles to get all my railroad stuff into my dad's car as I brought them to the convention and now, I had an additional steam loco with tender. So how to get all my stuff home again. The tender was no problem as I placed him on top of the trailer and secured him with some clamping belts. But where to load the loco? Some other railroaders, living close to my home, had room on their trailer for the loco and they offered me to bring the steamer to my home. At this day, my roster was grown by a new steam locomotive...

2. The first changes

Now, I began to research about the prototype of my new steamer, a 20hp Orenstein&Koppel light railway locomotive. With the new information of the loco, I started to add details and make the locomotive look closer to the prototype. At first, I designed a new cab with ventilation windows in front.

The new loco was first shown in public on a small model railroad convention in a light railway museum in Frankfurt/Main. As I came back from this wonderful day, I watched the photos and something seems to be wrong.

The black frame of the tender doesn't match with the red frame of the loco, so I take pencil and painted the tender frame to red. I also added some lettering to the tender and loco and named her "Diana". In this version, I drove to the "Huserland", a private owned 5" gauge railway, in mid May. It was a meet with Hannes, the owner of the "Angry Ant" and we had a very nice day, even as it rains most of the time.

I began to like working on the steam loco, so I spend a lot of time for more details. I added arch bar dummies to the front tender truck to match with the rear arch bar truck, as the front truck was a simple inside frame construction. The optical win was great.

Late in 2006, I disassembled the loco to maintain her for the first time. After cleaning, I reassembled the steamer and replaced some water pipe work and added more details. First day in steam after this break was the first January 2007 and there was only two weeks to the next indoor convention in Sinsheim.

3. Freshly painted for Sinsheim

But... how to spend two weeks in front of a convention… Right - working on the steamer. A railroader from Dresden (Saxonia) send me some more prototype information for my steamer, so I started another redesign. I added new manufacturer signs, ornament lines in black and a diamond stack. With this new outfit, I go to the convention and had three wonderful days. The absolute highlight could be the large and heavy log train. My little steamer could haul them without any problem and it looked great.

4. A new face on the Lost Valley Railroad

Well, this design of the steamer was only for a few months actually. I got a new idea for my loco, because she looks a bit to small and weakly on long and heavy trains. So I added side water tanks to the loco to get a stronger view of the engine and to add more weight to the drivers. The side tanks have been built out of sheet metal with rivets. This version becomes known as the 4th version of the steamer.

But how ever, I was still a bit unhappy with this design. During 2007, there happened a lot of changes in my private area, so why not to start a complete new theme in large scale railroading…

5. Going over the ocean...

So I shot down the operation on the Lost Valley Railroad and started a new company, the Bear Creek Railroad. First designed as a logging line, I'm now modeling a short line railroad. But an American railroad needs a US-styled steamer. So I began the work on the 5th redesign of "Diana", disassembled the whole loco and some weeks later, she was reborn as a 0-4-4 Forney-type steamer, now called "Christine".

But the first operation after the completion ended in a bad derailment. Some pipe work of the axle driven boiler feed pump have broke and the loco had to go back into the workshop…

6. "Christine" gets an extension

The damaged pipe work after the derailment needs to disassemble the whole engine again, to repair the broken parts. But this time, I'll spend more time and redesign some technical equipment on the steamer. I'll also add an injector to the loco in addition to the axle driven pumps, to feed the boiler when the loco doesn't run. The new injector needs a new valve arrangement on top of the back head and a new water tank on the loco. I also bought a new lubricator, hand pump and steam whistle.

Once the loco was disassembled, I also add a 30mm extension to the front and moved the rear end beam 75mm more to the rear. This makes the loco approx 100mm more in length and the proportional look of the loco will be much better then before.

I also changed the springs and weight balance of the loco to get more weight to the drivers and get the power down to the rails.

7. Rebuild into a "Logging Forney"

With the new gypsy winch on the front pilot, my Forney turns out as a real work horse. Now the loco can be used to skid and do loading/unloading jobs. You will found more about the gypsy winch assembly in my work shop reports.

8. Renamed into "Maggie" and new paint/details.

The last modification was done in summer 2010. I added a new roof cover and stained the wood parts of the frame in dark brown. The cab interior was painted in a new green to match with the look of the Shay. I also repainted some parts of the steam winch to eliminate the toy look.